


favored

by envysparkler



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Brother Acquisition, Exhaustion, Gen, Good Sibling Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Titans Tower au, Trapped, Whump, drugged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/envysparkler/pseuds/envysparkler
Summary: Jason watches the kid stagger down the hallway, wavering with every step, and follows on silent feet.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 94
Kudos: 1253
Collections: Red Hood vs Red Robin





	favored

**Author's Note:**

> *gasps* What's that? Yet _another_ Titans Tower AU scene? Who would've thought?
> 
> Also I was going to end it halfway through, and then it sorta went off the rails a bit, but I decided to post it instead of letting it sit and wait for inspiration to strike.

Sometimes it felt like the gods were smiling on him.

Not just the whole ‘coming back to life’ thing – which on good days was a blessing, but on bad days a green-laced curse – but his meticulously crafted revenge plan. Talia had raised her eyes at it, doubting that he’d be able to pull it off, dubious that he’d be able to keep the wool over Batman’s eyes until the grand finale, but so far, every step had gone off without a hitch.

And sometimes, like today, it felt like the opportunities were practically being dropped in his lap.

All his passcodes still worked for the Tower, which meant that Jason hadn’t had to hack a single thing to gain entry. The Teen Titans had just come back from a battle, worn and injured and exhausted, which was strike two in Jason’s favor. And when he logged into the mainframe, he saw that almost every member was already unconscious, vitals hovering in the sleep range – everyone except one.

Jason leisurely followed Robin down the hallway, sticking to the shadows and waiting for the kid to notice him.

He’d planned to face off against his replacement at full strength – to test him, to see how far the bird could fly before clipping his wings and bringing him crashing to the ground at Jason’s feet – but watching the kid’s face twist into despair from the very start was a prospect that kept the grin on Jason’s face.

He hadn’t removed the helmet. Not yet. Maybe not at all – if Jason played his cards right, if he didn’t reveal how he’d broken into the Tower, he could do this again and again and again, until Robin dreaded going out onto missions for fear of what was waiting for him back home.

Until he messed up in the field. Until Batman took it away from him, like he’d taken it away from Jason.

Jason stalked his prey through the halls of the Tower, past rooms and down stairs that had never had the chance to become familiar. The Tower had always been Nightwing’s domain, every inch of it draped with his predecessor’s disdain, and the idea that Dick had so easily handed the keys over to Timothy goddamn Drake grated at something deep inside of him.

Timothy Drake, who’d barely managed to lead his team out of what had clearly been an ambush, leading to several broken bones and lacerations among them. Timothy Drake, who was limping down the corridor with a taped-up ankle, one hand skimming the wall. Timothy Drake, who turned past the doors to the medbay, to the sleeping quarters, to the gym, to head for the main operations room.

For a moment, Jason wondered if he’d tripped some silent alarm, but Robin never turned to look at him, didn’t give a single twitch, and with every step, the hunch in his shoulders grew more pronounced.

The kid nearly faceplanted into the door before he recovered enough to tap in his entry code with trembling fingers. At this rate, all Jason needed was one good push.

He caught the door before it closed shut behind the Replacement, and snuck in the room after him.

The operations room was dark, lit only by the glow of multiple monitors, and the kid groaned as he slumped into the main chair. He stayed there, curled up, for a full fifteen seconds before reaching out a wavering hand to pull himself closer to the keyboard.

Jason stopped three feet behind him and stared at the screens with interest. The kid was going over the mission they’d just been on, the one that they’d managed to complete by the skin of their teeth. He was trying to figure out who’d sabotaged them, and where the corrupted intel had come from.

Too bad he was soon going to have other concerns.

Jason shifted forward, until he was almost touching the back of the chair, and waited.

The kid _still_ didn’t acknowledge Jason. Either Batman had been seriously slacking on the situational awareness training, or –

Or something was wrong.

Jason curled his fingers around the back of the chair. The kid sighed, and dropped his head. “I know, Kon,” he said wearily, “But I really need to figure this out before I can go to bed, okay? I’m fine.”

Jason spun the chair in lieu of answering, trapping the kid against the chair back as he loomed forward. The helmet concealed the vicious grin on his face, but he knew that the effect of white lenses on the gleaming red metal was frightening, especially in the dark.

“ _Kon_ ,” the Replacement whined, his eyes closed, “I need to finish this.” Jason waited. “Bart?”

Jason made a buzzer sound. “One guess left, Replacement,” he snarled, “Would you like to phone a friend?”

Disappointingly, the kid didn’t shriek or shout. Merely cracked his eyes open and studied the helmet like he could spot some trace of emotion on it.

“Huh,” the kid said finally. Jason was expecting something a little more shocked than _‘huh’_. “You’re not Kon.”

“No shit.”

“Not Bart either,” the kid mumbled.

“Again: _no shit_.”

“Who are you?”

Jason was tempted to say something dramatic, like _‘your nightmare, back from the dead’_ , but he was derailed as the kid lost focus, his gaze drifting away from the helmet.

“Need to finish,” the kid muttered, “Have to find out what went wrong.”

He was slurring his words now. Distant alarm bells began ringing in Jason’s head, warnings from long before Hood, long before Talia’s training, long before Robin and Batman.

“Kid,” Jason said, his hands squeezing bony shoulders, “Hey, kid, look at me.”

It took the Replacement five seconds to draw his gaze back to the helmet. He stared at the white lenses for less than a second before he slumped back in the chair, sliding further down. “Helmet,” he mumbled, barely audible, “Red helmet…who wears a red helmet? It’s not Halloween.”

The fingers that reached into one of his pockets and drew out a flashlight weren’t trembling, but there was something jittering through his veins, and he grabbed the kid’s head with a less-than-gentle grip as he switched the flashlight on.

The Replacement swore and tried to twist away, but Jason’s fingers were digging into his skull and the kid’s hands wavered as he attempted to draw them up. Jason let the right eye close, and checked the left, cold dread curling into the pit of his stomach.

Both pupils were blown wide, blue nearly swallowed by black, and neither was responding to the flashlight.

Jason had been watching the fight. At no point had Robin sustained a head injury. And if it wasn’t a concussion, then –

Jason checked the kid’s arms for needle marks, and then his neck. Nothing. He rocked back onto his heels as the Replacement began to frown, eyebrows drawing together as he stared up at Jason.

Robin had taken a blade to the side. Jason tugged the kid’s undershirt out of the way and slowly peeled back a corner of the bandages, ignoring the uptick in breathing.

“No,” the kid sucked in a sharp breath, “ _No_.”

No signs of inflammation or other contaminants. Jason replaced the bandage and straightened.

“No – Kon,” the kid called out, his voice barely rising higher than a whisper, wide eyes fixed on Jason, “ _Kon_.”

“He can’t hear you,” Jason responded gruffly. All of them were unconscious. He hadn’t even bothered to stop and _think_. It must’ve been area effect – some kind of gas, maybe, though Jason didn’t know anything that would’ve had the exact same effect on the eclectic group of metas, aliens, and sole normal human that comprised the Titans.

“What did you do?” the Replacement breathed out, horrified. He was staring at Jason in clear terror – the exact expression Jason had come all this way to create – and something in the wavering lips, watery eyes, and pale face twisted inside Jason’s stomach.

_You wanted him hurt_ , a furious voice hissed inside his head, _you wanted him screaming, you wanted him terrified and broken_.

_I didn’t want him_ dead, Jason hissed back.

“I did nothing,” Jason retorted, “Yet.”

The kid’s eyes widened further and he pressed back against the chair, trying to get away from Jason, but his limbs were too uncoordinated to make any real progress. He had an unknown drug running through his system on top of the bruises he’d accumulated from their scrape, and for a long, stretching moment, Jason just watched the Replacement’s feeble movements to get away.

When he’d imagined it, it had felt _good_ , it had felt heady, it was a rush of power tinged with green, a seething, righteous burn.

He would show the Replacement who the _real_ Robin was.

But there was no Robin here. There was a drugged, weaponless teenager dressed in sweatpants and a tank top trying to get away from an armored invader. Jason felt the world lurch underneath him as it resettled, green washed away to an ache of _no more dead kids_.

“No,” the kid gasped as Jason reached out and scooped him up, gangly limbs kicking weakly as fingers curled into the collar of his jacket with the strength of a kitten, “No – don’t – stop –”

Jason ignored him and headed for the medbay. He wouldn’t be able to do anything without first identifying the drug.

“ _Stop_ ,” the kid slurred, his head sinking against Jason’s shoulder as his grip faltered and failed, a limp arm dropping back down to his stomach, “What – what do you want – don’t –”

The door hissed as it opened, and the kid’s panic only intensified when they stepped inside. He was practically hyperventilating when Jason dumped him on one of the cots, stuttering something that might’ve been _‘please’_ over and over on a loop.

Jason rummaged through the cupboards and returned with a blood draw kit – the kid’s eyes widened to saucers at the sight of the needle in his hand.

“Shh,” Jason said softly, “I just need some of your blood.” The kid’s limbs twitched, but it was clear he couldn’t do more than that, the drug leeching away his strength. “It’s just a pinch, I promise.”

Tears slid down blotchy cheeks in tune to small, shivering, hitched breaths.

Jason was forced to wait, fingers wrapped around a trembling arm, until the vial filled and Jason could withdraw the needle and press a wad of gauze to the small pinprick.

Blinks were getting slower and longer, but they did nothing to hide the terror in those bright blue eyes.

“It’s okay,” Jason said quietly – _I’m not going to hurt you_ unable to cross his lips. Not when it was what he _came_ here for. Not when Jason wasn’t sure whether or not it was still a lie.

The kid’s eyes slid shut and didn’t open, choked gasps dying down as his breathing evened out.

Jason took a deep breath, fingers tightening around the vial of blood, and reached out to tug the blanket all the way up before he left to find a lab somewhere in the building.

* * *

Waking up felt like trying to crawl out of molasses – soft stickiness had coiled around his limbs, forcing him back under every time Tim pushed forward, and by the time he pried his eyes open, he was exhausted enough to go back to sleep.

Some distant thrum of danger told him that was a bad idea.

Tim lazily eyed the ceiling as he attempted to piece together how he’d gotten to the…medbay? Titan’s Tower, then. Tim wasn’t wearing a mask or his suit, so he hadn’t been that badly injured. They’d been fighting…no, infiltrating a base, and things had gone south with an alacrity that had frightened him.

No one had managed to emerge unscathed, he knew that, but he’d taped up his ankle and left the medbay to figure out what had gone wrong, so why was he _here_ –

Low, frustrated muttering. The familiar sound of keys tapping. The also familiar scent of coffee.

_Gotham_ , Tim’s always analytical subconscious identified the rough drawl, _Crime Alley_.

But Tim was the only Gothamite on the Titans.

Tim kept still – his head was throbbing, his ankle twinging slightly, the stab wound in his side making its presence known but not tipping over into painful – and mentally walked through his steps after he’d gotten back to the Tower.

Making sure everyone’s injuries were treated, and getting them all to their beds. Going to the main computer – a strange tension hanging in the air, he remembered feeling tired, and someone catching him at the computer – Kon? No, Kon had been injured, it couldn’t be –

A gleaming red helmet, and his limbs weren’t working properly, and he was being carried somewhere with no mask, no weapon, no gear.

A muttered curse broke the silence, and Tim choked down the rising hysteria to _slowly_ tilt his head to the left and observe the intruder.

They were sitting on the adjacent bed, tapping on a laptop with printouts and a pad of paper surrounding them. The smell of coffee was emanating from a Batman mug – _Tim’s mug_ – and there was a red helmet and a small mountain of gear set on the table.

Tall and broad-shouldered, posture straight with an ease that spoke of years of training. Black hair, with a shock of white above blue-green eyes. Strong jaw and a face twisted into a scowl. Not looking at him.

Dressed in a black undershirt and cargo pants, squinting at the laptop screen and absently taking another sip of coffee, the intruder looked much less threatening than he had looming over Tim as his vision went fuzzy.

The intruder groaned and straightened into a stretch, tilting his head back until something cracked along his spine, and twisting towards Tim.

Tim froze. The intruder stilled – now that he was facing Tim, he didn’t look that old. Late teens, maybe early twenties.

“You’re awake,” the stranger said, voice near toneless.

Tim had a hundred questions bouncing around in his head – who was he? What was up with the helmet? Why was Tim waking up on a cot in the medbay and not restrained somewhere? – and chose one at random. “What happened?” he croaked.

The stranger winced at the sound of his voice and motioned to the jug of water on Tim’s bedside. Tim warily straightened up, keeping his gaze on the stranger as he reached for a glass.

“You were drugged,” the stranger said. Tim choked on his sip, but the stranger didn’t seem to notice. “Your whole team, in fact – and each of you were drugged _separately_ , and let me tell you, it was a pain and a half to create that many personal antidotes.” The stranger was gesticulating now, his eyes half-manic with the expression Tim usually saw in a mirror, the restless energy of too much coffee on an empty stomach.

“Sure, living in Gotham means learning a bit of biochemistry or resigning yourself to death via the toxin du jour, but learning in the trial by fire of developing a working antitoxin for a half-Kryptonian, half-human hybrid against some drug that some genius managed to perfectly tailor to said hybrid is _not fun_.” The stranger leaned forward, suddenly serious again – definitely too much coffee – and said, in a tone of grave indignation, “It took me nearly thirty hours straight, Timbo.”

Tim blinked – he’d been out for _thirty hours_? This lunatic had tested out experimental antitoxins on Kon? Tim did _not_ remember being drugged – before tensing so suddenly that the stranger’s rant cut off.

The stranger stared at him. Tim stared at the stranger, his heart thudding in his chest as he tried to remember how to breathe.

“How do you know my name?”

The guy opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, “You know, I don’t actually have a good answer for that, so I’m just going to finish my work and leave.”

“What are you doing?” Tim squinted, “Is that my laptop? And you stole my mug.”

The stranger made a harsh sound that mimicked a bark of unamused laughter. “I don’t think you want to go down the path of who stole what, _Robin_ ,” the stranger muttered, his attention back on the screen.

“What are you doing?” Tim repeated, pushing himself upright. His gear was all back in his room and now his head was _killing_ him, but he was Robin, he didn’t need any fancy gadgets to take someone down.

“Trying to find out who drugged you,” the guy murmured absently, “You did some solid work in ruling out some leads, kid. I’ve gotten it down to three groups that would have the means to create or order something like this, and the motive to want the Titans gone.” He did some more typing, and scrawled something down on his pad of paper before levering off the bed.

He stopped short when he saw Tim standing in his path. He scanned Tim up and down, and gave him an unimpressed look, “Get out of my way.”

“How did you get in here?” Tim asked, wavering on the balls of his feet, trying not to betray how badly his head was throbbing.

“Walked through the front door,” the guy snorted, turning his back on Tim to start putting his gear back on. Tim set his jaw, and attacked – and before he could even register that the world was spinning around him, he crashed back onto the bed.

Tim tried to suppress the pained whine as he clutched at his head – the sudden jolt in position had definitely not helped his headache.

“Do yourself a favor, kid,” the older boy drawled, “Take some aspirin and get some sleep.” He had finished putting the armor back on, and shrugged a leather jacket on top of the ensemble, gathering his papers and the helmet.

“And where are you going?” Tim managed to force out through clenched teeth.

“Hunting down whoever did this,” the guy waved the papers, grinning, “Going to explode some anthills and see what crawls out.”

It was the grin that did it. The crooked little smile, fierce with an edge of danger, that Tim had seen through a camera lens hundreds of times.

“Jason,” Tim breathed out, frozen.

The older boy jerked to a stop, as if just realizing that he hadn’t put his helmet back on. He stared from it to Tim and back again. And then he sighed.

“Well, so much for things going my way,” Jason muttered under his breath, turning away, and Tim scrambled upright – what – _how_ – Jason was dead – Jason couldn’t be _here_ –

“Wait,” Tim called out, nearly tripping as he got off the bed, but Jason didn’t pause.

“I put the Tower on lockdown while I was synthesizing the toxin,” he called back, fitting the helmet over his head, and his next words came out distorted, “I’d suggest putting it back after I’m gone, because your friends won’t be waking up for another couple of hours.”

“Jason, wait!”

“I didn’t come here for a chat, Replacement,” Jason retorted, walking faster, and Tim wasn’t going to be able to catch up with a sprained ankle.

“Why _did_ you come here?” Tim called out in a futile effort to stall, but Jason merely lifted a hand in farewell before disappearing down the stairs.

Tim leaned against the wall and took a slow, deep breath.

And then he went to find the nearest communicator.

“ _Robin!_ ” Nightwing’s voice was frantic, “ _What happened? The Tower’s been unreachable for a day!_ ”

“I – I don’t know,” Tim said, staring in the direction that Jason had gone, “But I think you need to get over here.”

* * *

White lenses of a red helmet met the white lenses of a domino mask. The air hung still and heavy, choked with smoke and dust. Red and black and brown, facing off against black and blue.

Jason discreetly tugged at the slab of concrete currently pinning his left leg to the ground, to no avail.

Nightwing made a small, choked sound, and Jason finally gave up on seeing anything through his cracked helmet and peeled it off.

Nightwing made another small, choked sound when he saw Jason’s face, though it was still concealed by a domino mask.

“How did you find me?” Jason asked, letting go of the pretense that this was just an unlucky meeting between a vigilante and a suspiciously-dressed-but-totally-innocent bystander.

“You left a list of your targets on Robin’s laptop,” Nightwing said, his voice hoarser than usual.

Right, Jason had done that. In his defense, that had been around cup number eight and hour number forty-seven of no sleep.

Jason cast around for a different topic. “How is the kid?” he asked weakly, giving another push to the concrete as he kicked out.

The good news was that concrete shifted. The bad news was that his leg was still trapped, and now something was screaming in agony –

“Shh, shh, Jaybird, I have you, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I promise –”

Though that might’ve been him, panting hoarsely into black-and-blue kevlar, his eyes squeezed shut as a soothing murmur hummed out of tune to the searing fire burning down his leg.

“I have you, Little Wing, it’s okay, you’re safe,” his big brother whispered, and Jason pressed his face further into the uniform as he tried to suppress his pained gasps. Darkness was encroaching around him, and all Jason could think about was how completely his plan had gone off the rails.

And it was all the Replacement’s fault. He was going to strangle that kid the next time he saw him.

* * *

“This,” Bruce said slowly, unable to tear his eyes from the sleeping form in the medbay of Titans’ Tower, “Isn’t funny.”

Dick gave him a flat stare, still in his Nightwing suit and covered in fine dust. He looked exhausted. Tim, not in his Robin suit, looked equally tired, dark bags under his eyes as he peered over the edge of his laptop.

“You might’ve registered the distinct lack of laughter in the room, B,” Dick ground out, “I told you, I’ve run the tests a hundred times. You want to run them again in the Cave, be my guest.”

“He knew the passcodes to the Tower,” Tim offered.

Bruce looked at them, and down at the face of what his son might’ve looked like, had he not _died_.

He sank into the waiting chair. His son’s hand was warm. Warm and alive, pulse beating steadily under his fingers.

“ _How_?” Bruce managed to get out, a strangled sound through his closed-up throat.

Dick and Tim exchanged glances and shrugged in tandem. “Miracle?” Dick offered.

“Miracles aren’t _real_ ,” Bruce growled, and bowed his head until he could press Jason’s hand to his forehead.

It was warm. It was _warm_.

Bruce thanked whatever gods had seen fit to give him his child back.

**Author's Note:**

> On the other side of the world, Talia sighs and shakes her head. "I told you so," she murmurs, and goes to get Damian.


End file.
